Wednesday, September 06, 2006

More journalistic asshattery here, via THR.First up, the Jim Borgman cartoon. What we have here is yet more lack of a real cost-benefit analysis. "This bullet killed a cop/convenience store clerk/andonandon?" What about the bullet that killed the home invader that broke down the door at 3 in the morning? Or the bullet that killed the rapist in the alley, or the abusive boyfriend while he was in the midst of violating his girlfriend? I haven't really been given any reason to believe that brain-dead big-city dead-tree cartoonists and their circle-jerking ilk are ever going to see the benefits of deadly force in the hands of private citizens, but I still find it, and will always find it, absolutely infuriating that these cretins will sit there on their moral high horses, in their air-conditioned offices and spew this filth. That is their First Amendment right, of course, but it would be great if they were not infected with such extreme cases of cranial-rectal inversion. And it would be even better if, instead of more or less advocating that Americans be disarmed by armed men, they would actually show a shred of intellectual integrity and demand that Americans be disarmed by gun bigots like himself with nothing but their bare hands. Of course, that would also take spine, which the gun bigots have shown to be sorely lacking.Next up, we have more idiocy from -- where else? -- the New York Times. We have seen the Gray Lady prostituting herself out to a few anti-American causes before, and this time, it's a favorite client of hers, the gun-haters(emphasis mine -- ed.):

I asked one of the state coalitions opposed to these laws (concealed-carry laws -- ed.) whether it would attack them in the Legislature this year. The answer was no. It is too busy trying to defeat a "shoot first" bill, which would give gun owners the right to fire away instead of trying to avoid a confrontation. The way I see it, Minnesota is only one step away from requiring every citizen to carry a gun and use it when provoked....

Like my family in Iowa, Minnesotans were gun owners because they hunted pheasants and rabbits and deer. But then I'm thinking of a time when the leadership of the National Rifle Association resembled a band of merry sportsmen and not the paranoid cabal it is today....

...to me, owning guns and knowing how to use them properly was part of a civic bargain. I would leave the police work to the police, and they would leave the squirrel hunting to me. The notion that 38 states would have "concealed carry" laws in 2006 would have seemed insane, a regression to a more primitive idea of who we are....

the law strips the public of its right to occupy public spaces without the threat of being shot....

Where to start on this one? This is just more of the same 'give people a gun and they'll shoot willy-nilly," "the right to keep and bear arms is about squirrel hunting," you know the drill. Same shit, different day, long on flash, but painfully short on boom -- or, as the title character in Shakespeare's Macbeth said of life, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."It was very interesting, though, to see the reader comments on the Borgman cartoon. They more or less ripped him to shreds. I am not sure how many of those are local readers of Borgman's paper, the Cincinnati Enquirer, but I don't think it's that farfetched to say that it was to some extent an illustration of the ideological disconnect between certain elements of the mainstream media and its audience on the issue of gun control. It would be fun to see if that same disconnect existed among the NYT audience; unfortunately, though, the author of that hysterical screed apparently doesn't have a blog, and the International Herald-Tribune (in which the piece appeared) doesn't have any kind of feedback forum for the article. Perhaps it's just as well. He probably wouldn't be able to handle the truth.

Unorganized Militia Propaganda Corps

About Me

I am a very opinionated guy, Texan and quite proud of it. I lean toward the right politically but have a few libertarian tendencies that my conservative brothers and sisters might not agree with. I like guns, old country music and a lot of other things.

Essential Reading

False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils, except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty -- so dear to men, so dear to the enlightened legislator -- and subject innocent persons to all the vexations that the guilty alone ought to suffer? Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.-- Cesare Beccaria, in On Crimes And Punishments, later quoted by Thomas Jefferson

Echo

The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.-- Alexander Hamilton